Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence

Gate passedSeeker and aboveModern transcription — not a facsimileJacob Boehme (1575–1624)PUBLIC DOMAIN as published. Boehme d. 1624; the Sparrow translation is 1656. Per-part determination MADE 2026-08-29: the eight front-matter segments carrying the 2009 electronic edition own introductory apparatus were withheld (three excised in full, five redacted in part where a public-domain title block or Boehme text shared the page). The remaining 5,022 segments are public domain and are open at seeker tier.905 of 1000 segments carry a modern register · 343 pp

Jacob Boehme — the works in English, and one in Frencheditor’s preface to the volume

Eleven books by a shoemaker of Görlitz who wrote, by his own account, because he could not help it. Ten of them stand here in the seventeenth-century English of John Sparrow, who translated Boehme within a generation of his death and whose prose is itself now four hundred years old; where that English has drifted out of reach, the facing pane carries a modern register — the same text with archaic inflection and spelling normalised by rule, never paraphrased. Nothing is reworded, and where no register appears beside a passage it is because the rules found nothing to change.

The eleventh book is not in English at all, and it is the reason this note exists.

Des trois principes de l'essence divine, printed at Paris in 1802, is the same work as Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence, which stands here as the second book — the same twenty-seven chapters in the same order, opening `Du premier principe de l'essence divine` against Sparrow's `Of the first Principle of the Divine Essence`. Its translator was Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, who gave the last years of his life to putting Boehme into French, and who has a shelf of his own in this Lycaeum.

That makes a closed circuit inside this archive, and it is worth naming plainly. Saint-Martin translates Boehme. La Iniciación, printed in Montevideo a hundred and forty years later, traces its own descent through Saint-Martin. A reader can therefore follow one thread from a German mystic of 1619, through the French philosopher who carried him into another language, to a Spanish-language monthly of the 1940s that claimed them both — and read every step of it in the original.

The two are shelved as one work rather than two because that is what they are. They are not set as facing panes: an English translation of 1619 and a French translation of 1802 are two independent readings of a lost German original, and pairing them line by line would assert a correspondence neither translator ever claimed.

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149. And the spirit of the eternal essences (which hath understanding and knowledge, and also the trial and proving of every thing, in which the source [or active property or quality] which is in man, consisteth) that was breathed into him, by the wisdom of God, through the driving will, which goeth 8 forward, out of the eternal mind, out of30rintorethe opened gates of the deep, through the word, 81 [together] with the moving spirit of God. And he had the 4 touch of the centre of the abyss [wz.]« Or stirring. the eternal source 6 behind him, as a band, and6 Or as the before him, the heart and light of God, as a glance the light. of the joy and kindling of paradise, which springe th up in the essences with the light of the joy ; and beneath him [he had] the four elements in the budding out of the limbus which was in him. 390 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 17 50. And as long as he set his imagination in the Heart of God, the paradise was in him, [and he in the paradise], and the band of the abyss in him (in 1 Or property, the l source) was a paradise of transcendent ioy: as the fire is ' . * J the cause of and the kingdom of this world held him from shining. beneath also in the band, because it goeth forth from the element. But so long as he. set his mind in the Heart of God, it [the kingdom of the four elements] could not lay hold on him [or master him], and it was impotent, as to him, as this world is impotent as to God.

251. And thus the spirit and soul of Adam stood in the midst (in the joyful paradise) forty days, as 8 three had a one [only! day. and all 2 inclined to him ; one desire to have L J J J him. [whereof was] the kingdom of hell, of the eternal originality out of the dark mind, out of which his worm of the soul (in the opened gate) was gone forth ; and secondly, [there inclined to him] the Deity of the kingdom of heaven in the opened gate, in the pleasant lustre ; and thirdly, the spirit of the stars and elements [inclined to him] drawing him to their bands, and heartily desiring him. 52. And thus Adam stood upright in the temptation ; for his angry mind (out of the originality of the first Principle) stood in joy [being enlightened] from the light of God ; and the source of the fierce wrath made the rising joy, for the light made all meek and friendly, that he might incline himself to love ; and thereby he stood (on earth) rightly in the paradise. Ch. 17] OF THE FALL OF ADAM AND EVE 391 53. The four elements of this world, together with the sun and stars, could not qualify [or mix] with him ; he drew no air into him ; but the spirit of God (in the virgin) was his breathing, and [his] kindling of the. fire in the spirit.

354. But while he thus stood (between the kingdom of hell and the kingdom of this world) in the paradise, bound with bands, and yet also wholly free, in the might of God, he [reflected himself into or] discovered himself in the great deep of the kingdom of this world ; in which the great wonders also stand hidden in the centre, as we see that man hath (by his eternal mind) discovered it, and brought it to x light, as is seen » Or the day. before our eyes. And in his discovering [or reflecting] he imagined, and fell into lust, for the spirit of the world took hold of him, (as a mother maketh a mark upon a child in the mother's womb), and [he] became (in the lust) impregnated from the spirit of this world, and then was blind as to God, and saw neither God nor the virgin any more in his mind. And thus the kingdom of heaven continued in the opened gate of the omnipotence [or almightiness], (in the paradise) in its [own] Principle to itself (and the virgin in it) hidden in the centre, and was in Adam, and yet Adam (with his mind) was not in God, but in the spirit of this world ; and he became feeble as to the kingdom of God, and so fell down and slept. 55. And then God (by the spirit of this world 392 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 17 1 Adam. through the Fiat) built [or formed] out of 1him 2 multiplied the woman of this world, by whom he 2 increased or propagated. .... „,,

The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.

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Commentary

whole issue ·

Cross-estate[P-V]translated_asboehme:2:1:003

This English 'Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence' and boehme:11 are the same work in two languages — and the French is not just any translation. It is Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin's own: 'Des trois principes de l'essence divine', issued by the Périsse brothers of the rue Mercière. Saint-Martin learned German in his fifties expressly to read Boehme, and spent his last years translating him. The estate therefore holds, side by side, the text that formed the Unknown Philosopher and the form in which he gave it to France — the single most direct documentary link between the two founders of this corpus.

→ boehme:11